LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gerrit Rietveld: De Stijl
built 267 days ago
Dutch minimalist architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld was a member of the De Stijl movement. Significant for his work is how he pared his design down to basic cubist elements and often used primary colours to emphasise the different planes. Most of his furniture was designed and manufactured to accompany his architectural commissions.
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Gerrit Rietveld was a young rationalist architect in his thirties, active and committed, when he joined the De Stijl movement in 1918. The movement tended to translate and compose in ideology the theme of dynamic breakdown and decomposition that had been expressed in cubist painting.
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Gerrit Rietveld started out as a furniture maker and that shows up in a lot of the detailing of the house. The design of the portable partitions, the window screen, the table for the children and many more of the details show his ingenuity. The location of the house used to be considered as the outskirts of Utrecht, and has an unobstructed view. Rietveld designed the house with that in mind, with a window on the upper floor that opens up the corner of that floor to the exterior. It was used to provide Mrs. Schroder with a great view, until a highway was constructed in front of the house.
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In 1922, the architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld produced a new interior for the surgery of Dr A.M. Hartog, a family physician in Maarssen. A focal point in the interior was this desk with its rather heavy appearance, particularly in comparison with the other more transparent pieces of furniture designed by Rietveld. The desk consists of an interplay of planes and is composed of a black worktop supported by two yellow sets of drawers. The drawers have square handles cunningly positioned off-centre. The desk is the only piece of furniture that still survives from Dr Hartog's surgery.
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Gerrit Rietveld was born on June 24, 1888, in Utrecht and lived there most of his life. He was trained as a cabinetmaker by his father (1899-1906) and as a jewelry designer in the studio of C. J. Begeer (1906-1911). For the next 8 years he was self-employed as a cabinetmaker while studying and working with the architect P. J. Klaarhamer. Rietveld's career as an independent architect began in 1919.
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The Dutch designer, architect, and painter Gerrit Rietveld was born in Utrecht in 1888. Until he was fifteen years old, he worked in his father's carpentry workshop. Gerrit Rietveld worked as a draftsman in the workshop of the goldsmith C.J.A. until 1913 while at the same time attending evening courses and learning technical drawing from the architect P.J.C. Klaarhamer.
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